It is clear that baking lowered the failure strength of the fasteners, but the fracture surfaces of the failed fasteners appeared to show embrittlement, so we do not think it was simply lower strength that caused the premature failures. However, I agree that our study was very limited, and evaluation of fracture surfaces subjected to failure under torsion are not easy to interpret, so we are open to other explanations, and we recommend further study is needed to investigate this controversy. Nothing beats sampling based on proper statistical process control, destructive testing, and examination of the fractured specimens and fracture surfaces to evaluate embrittlement, so I am sorry I do not know of an NDT test that can substitute for that. That is another question that deserves further research.
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